I have been waffling between doing a 100% brett black ipa-ish or a 100% brett baltic porter next. The baltic porter recipes that I'm coming across call for some malts that I'm not familiar with such as Belgian Munich and Belgian Special B.

What can I expect out of those? I am leaning towards doing at least a part of this brew with blackberries and maybe even the whole batch. Would those malts work with blackberries or would they clash?

I've used little amounts of special B in biere de gardes before. Fruit sort of sweetness. Kind of weird. Think fruitiness of a dubbel. Never used Belgian Munich, but what I just read about it sounds interesting.

After topping off the barrel for the past 24 hours, most of the leaking has stopped. Just poured in 5 gallons of 180 degree water to sanitize and try and get the wood just a touch more swollen to close the last little cracks. Think I might leave this water in there until tomorrow, dump, then nuke it with campden for a day or two, then put a handle or two of whiskey in there for long term storage.

The water I poured out earlier had a slight toasted oak aroma. I'm wondering how much whiskey flavor is actually left in it at this point. I'm really curious to know what would happen if I got a case of whole foods chardonnay and dumped it in there. I like the idea of wine barrel aging more than bourbon barrel aging. I shall debate this with myself and do a little research.

quote: Never used Belgian Munich, but what I just read about it sounds interesting.

Yeah, I'm really liking what the net has to say about it. It looks like I will have to order it, since the local place doesn't carry it. I've never order milled grains online. Northernbrewer has Belgian Munich, anyone used them for their grains?

Never had a problem from them. Only positive experiences. One time I received a dented better bottle from them. They shipped me a replacement at no cost and let me keep the dented one. Still use the dented one 4 years later.